A sweetly timed ton from Jaffer

Having booked his ticket to Pakistan, riding on a stupendous 267 early in the season, Wasim Jaffer today took the field against Tamil Nadu w...

Having booked his ticket to Pakistan, riding on a stupendous 267 early in the season, Wasim Jaffer today took the field against Tamil Nadu with a queer sense of pressure to justify his selection.

Chosen behind Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, and ahead of another prolific run-getter Dheeraj Jadhav for what the stylish opener has termed his toughest Test series to date, Jaffer scored an assertive 162 against the south-side opponents. ‘‘The century was important for Mumbai first, and also for my own confidence, so in that sense it was sweetly timed,’’ Jaffer said after his 234 ball-162 in what is also his warm-up game before heading to Pakistan.

His third three-figure knock of the season which helped Mumbai score a healthy 372-6 against their co-finalists of two years ago, also helped the Mumbai right-hand bat maintain the momentum in his golden season.

‘‘For the last few years, I have been seeking consistency, and I’ve found it this year after playing the summers in England,’’ he said.

Stacking his runs season-after-season after his brief spell with India ended at Nottingham, Jaffer believes the 267 was a turning point this year. ‘‘I don’t have too many double-hundreds in my career, though I have scored a couple of 180’s and two 160’s last year. Now I wanted to make my 100’s count. Also I realised if 100’s don’t make an impact, then I have to make 200’s to make an impression,’’ Jaffer added.

Informed by his team management that he wouldn’t be opening the innings to enable wicketkeeper Vinayak Samant find his touch, Jaffer walked after Mumbai lost their first wicket in the fourth over. He negotiated the seaming ball from TN pacer Vignesh for an hour, before settling down to play a fluent knock with two dozen boundaries and a lofted six taking on offie Aashish Kapoor.

Three years of the grind on the domestic circuit after his first outing with the Indian squad have also opened his eyes to the big chasm between the two playing levels.

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‘‘I don’t want to get carried away by the hundreds, because I know the quality of bowling in Pakistan will be hugely different. Having watched them play against England, I know it will be very tough. But now that I’ve made it till here, there won’t be any looking back,’’ Jaffer said.

OTHER SCORES

At Mumbai: Mumbai: 372-6 (Jaffer 162, Muzumdar 39, Indulkar 36, Shetty batting 52, Kumaran 2/90, Vignesh 3/90)

At Bangalore: Karnataka: 255-7 (Robin Uthappa 96, Barrington Rowland 46, Sujit Somasundar 31, Munaf Patel 2/37, Sairaj Bhahutale 2/80).

At Hyderabad: Services: 196 (Arun Sharma 40, A K Mohanty 36, Yashpal Singh 31, Kaushik Reddy 5/57, Indra Sekhar Reddy 4/28) vs Hyderabad: 43-1

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At Surat: Bengal: 195-3 (Arindham Das 64, Abhishek Jhunjunwala 72, R Gavaskar batting 26, Siddarth Trivedi 2/32) vs Gujarat

At Palakkad: Kerala: 320-6 (S Suresh 121, Sadagopan Ramesh 60, Sunil Oasis 53, Sunny Gupta 3/111, Sujeet Rao 2/113) vs Jharkhand)

At Indore: Plate Group B match between MP and J-K postponed by a day